Fall 2005 Meeting Minutes

DIGOR Fall Meeting

September 23, 2005

Hannon Library, Southern Oregon University, Ashland

Present at meeting: Laura Ayling (chair, Lewis & Clark); Kelly Peterson (chair-elect, OIT) Valery King (secretary, OSU); Tom Stave (UO); Deborah Hollens (SOU); Jey Wann (State Library); Judith Jordet (COCC)

Welcome: Laura opened the meeting at 10:15 by welcoming everyone and introducing the new DIGOR officers. Laura is the new chair; Kelly Peterson is our new chair-elect, and Valery King is new secretary (as well as the immediate past chair).

Membership and Budget: Laura reported membership stands at 21, one fewer than last year. We would like to encourage more members to attend our meetings, and will make that effort for the Spring business meeting at OLA. Our budget is $858.76.

OLA Retreat: Laura and Valery attended the OLA Retreat at Silver Falls State Park in August. The president’s theme this year for the OLA meeting is “Thriving on Change: Embrace the Possibilities.”

State Library Report: Jey reported a number of staffing changes at the State Library, particularly among the middle management, resulting in a record number of managers who are new to their positions. They will soon be interviewing replacements for Dee Iltis in cataloging, who has retired. Susan Westin has been promoted to Talking Book and Braille Services Program Manager, and possible replacements for her as E-Government librarian are currently being interviewed. Robert Hulshof-Schmidt is the new Government Research and Electronic Services Program Manager. Pam Horan has retired, and MaryKay Dahlgreen has been appointed Library Development Program Manager, leaving Children Services vacant for now. With so many new people in new positions they are expecting lots of new ideas and initiatives.

Other reports:
Kelly: OIT has two open positions, Technical Services and Collection Development librarians. With an improvement in faculty rank and salary increases, they have hopes of filling these with good candidates. Once the positions are filled, she hopes to institute a project to clean up the government documents collection.

Tom reported that UO has cataloged all the local planning documents they have, and are working on ways to capture and preserve the born-digital planning documents. A community has been set up for them in the UO’s Institutional Repository (Oregon Local Documents). Full metadata has been created; they are not in the catalog, but could be placed there and be accessible via Summit. Also, Data for Local Communities has expanded to include Washington. He mentioned that Oregon universities are digitizing the Columbia River information for the GWLA Western Waters Digital Library.

Laura did not received a report from the Regional librarian. Lewis & Clark has just hired a cataloging specialist. The British Parliamentary Papers from the 19th century are out of storage and the library is halfway through giving them item level cataloging.

Via email, Alex Toth made the suggestion that DIGOR develop a more graphical presence for our web page, and the group agreed this is an important area to explore. He offered his newly remodeled library at Pacific University (Forest Grove) for a future meeting.

Valery reported that Oregon State University is proceeding at a fast pace with various digitization projects, including the Willamette Basin Explorer and Virtual Oregon (a natural resources data clearinghouse). Early USDA Forest Service papers are also being digitized and placed within the institutional repository.

At Southern, Deb informed us that staffing is down in documents this year so there will be not as much digitization as in previous years. SODA is up to 1800 volumes. They have proposed digitizing a collection of southern Oregon historical primary sources in partnership with the historical society.

Following lunch, the group agreed to hold the Business Meeting at the Oregon Library Association annual meeting on Thursday afternoon (April 6) rather than Friday morning (April 7). Laura will submit the request for this date to OLA.

2006 OLA Program proposal discussion: Robert Hulshof-Schmidt has offered to present a program on the Virtual Repository for Oregon, covering the new mandate for Oregon agencies to contribute documents electronically. We thought this would have interest for a lot of librarians in the state and approved this proposal. We also approved a proposal for a 1 ½ hour program showcasing a variety of digital initiatives around the state. Laura will write up these two proposals and submit them to the OLA Programming Committee.

OLA 2005 programs: There was a lot of confusion at the conference over how feedback would be collected, and as a result many of the feedback forms went astray. What we did gather was almost entirely positive. Co-sponsored by the Intellectual Freedom Committee, The Umbrella of Secrecy: When the USA Patriot Act and FOIA Collide with Mary Ann Hyatt from University of Oregon Law Library was very well attended, with around 80 people. Navigating the Waters of Collaboration for a Digital Library Project with Marita Kunkel and Kelly Peterson from Oregon Institute of Technology was less well attended being last on Friday afternoon but attendees indicated they found it interesting and informative.

HB 2118 implementation – Jey Wann
Jey updated us on some of the changes happening to the State Library and its web pages due to HB 2118. Oregon.gov has been rearranged to be more user-friendly, as people are presented with a “How do I…” Q&A, instead of a list of agencies; the FindOr search is on the top of the page; and there will no longer be a limited on the number of documents searched, so it could be used to include searching other levels of government. All issuing agencies will be required to submit to the State Library their electronically published documents as well as the print documents for archiving. Changes coming to the depository system are a reduction of depositories to ten; eliminating the core documents list; and requiring depository libraries to download bibliographic records for digital documents into their catalogs. Changes to depositories will occur in January 2006. There will be meetings soon to discuss who will house the server and the dark archive.

Depository Council’s Vision
Everyone is encouraged to read the recent proposal. Major changes are proposed to the selection of online titles; 500 items are being eliminated. Comments are due to GPO by October 3.

Following the meeting, Deb took us on a tour of the beautiful new library. We adjourned at 3pm.

Submitted by Valery King, DIGOR Secretary